The 2017-2018 Broadway Season will include a revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classic musical Carousel. The New York Times has reported that Director Jack O’Brien (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) will helm the production produced by Scott Rudin and Roy Furman. Leading the cast will be Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, and Renée Fleming as Nettie Fowler. Justin Peck will provide the choreography.
Anyone who goes all-in for a Disney World vacation, or anyone who goes investigating beyond the rides and shows, knows that a big part of the experience is eating at the myriad, wonderful restaurants on site. There are many beloved places to eat, some deserving and others that don’t quite live-up to their hype. Exploring the Disney eateries is all a part of the adventure, and each time I visit, I make it a point to try a new restaurant or two.
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Theatre critics: there is a love-hate relationship for those who write critically about the theatre, especially these power-wielding wordsmiths who used to have a great deal of influence on what shows ran and what shows quickly closed-shop. Walter Kerr, John Simon, Frank Rich, Brooks Atkinson, and Clive Barnes were titans of a field that has been egregiously underrepresented by female writers (thankfully, that is changing as room is being made for a more diverse voices). Nowadays, enthusiastic word-of-mouth, the right star or composer, and a good advertising campaign can overcome the scathing review of a critic’s pen, so their influence doesn’t quite have the impact that it used to. That being said, the theatre critic has always been, and always will be, an essential part of the theatre scene.
We’ve seen it occasionally happen over the years: movies that hope to cash-in on iconic television shows by using them as a basis for a feature film. Typically, these outings are awful. They seldom do anything to improve upon the performances and premises on which they are based. The recent ChiPs is an example. A bumbling film of poor taste that does damage to the show’s reputation by recreating it as a comedy with insipid, juvenile humor and frankly, poor taste. Other TV to film enterprises include the Scooby-Doo films, Bewitched, The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Brady Bunch, Charlie’s Angels, Dragnet, Dukes of Hazzard, Fat Albert, The Fugitive, Lost in Space, The Smurfs, South Park, Thunderbirds, Veronica Mars, 21 Jump Street, The Avengers, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Inspector Gadget, The Honeymooners, Miami Vice, Mission: Impossible, Star Trek (myriad inceptions), and The Mod Squad. This is just a partial list, but as you glance through it, only a handful stick out as having been faithful, entertaining adaptations of their original sources. Why is it that so many films that found their genesis in popular TV shows have failed to ignite on the big screen? How does this bode for the upcoming and eagerly-anticipated (by some) Baywatch film?
